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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith made his pitch to the fan base on Tuesday.
The Jazz will begin a season that is highly expected to be very different than the last few. Utah has made the postseason in six straight seasons, but you'd be hard pressed to find even the most optimistic fan that would bet on the team to push that streak to seven.
For the Jazz, this season is about planting the seeds for the next championship window. And it starts by answering some questions about this year's squad.
What will Lauri Markkanen look like as more or less a No. 1 option? Are Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt role players for a contending team? What do the Jazz have in rookies Ochai Agbaji and Walker Kessler? How will new coach Will Hardy do in his first season?
For Smith, the mystery is part of the fun, and he's hopeful the fans will think so, too.
"I think it's an exciting time to be a Jazz fan," Smith said Tuesday. "I really do. … We've got a group of players who are hungry. There's an energy, there's an excitement, there's exciting players. We're young, but we also have a group of veterans, which is kind of unique. And I think we've got one of the most exciting young coaches in the league.
"I'm curious to see, just like everyone else, what comes out of that."
While Hardy and his young team will focus exclusively on this season and on this year's team, the front office has made it clear they are a future thinking bunch. You don't trade away four starters, including two perennial All-Stars, for a cache of future picks if you're looking to get better in the short term.
Those were deals made to give hope for the future. So when Jazz CEO of basketball Danny Ainge was asked about presumed 2023 No. 1 pick Victor Wembanyama on Tuesday, it didn't feel out of place. In fact, it felt more than appropriate (Ainge admitted he was looking forward to going over to Paris to watch the French phenom in person).
"Let's just be honest, we're a team and a city that has got to build through the draft," Smith said. "We have to. You look at Donovan (Mitchell), you look at Rudy (Gobert), look who we drafted, that's where we've basically created these people that our fan base loves."
Utah has three first-round draft picks next year and what feels like dozens more over the next few seasons.
Still, there's much to learn about the players and the team this season.
Utah has 11 players on its main roster that are 26 or younger. The term "young vet" has been the buzzword at training camp to describe Beasley, Markkanen, Vanderbilt, Collin Sexton and others. These are players who are established in the NBA and have league-wide value but are still on the younger side of things.
There's no reason to think some of those guys couldn't be part of the next contending Jazz squad.
"I think some of it is just the progression of players, individual players, and who are the ones that we want to continue to invest in," Ainge said. "That's more who's making progress. I think that is probably the first steps of evaluation."
What likely won't play a role in evaluation? Wins and losses. The Jazz know who they are and the position they have put themselves in with the rebuild. They'll allow Hardy to captain the ship and lead the team how he sees fit but won't expect a miracle showing.
"It's called patience," Ainge said. "I'm excited to work with Will this year, and I think the objectives that we have are pretty clear in our conversations as we prepare to go forward. But I really want to see him grow as a coach, and I think that this is an amazing opportunity for him."
Utah's taken a few steps back in order to hopefully rise to the top of the league in the future.
It's a big swing.
Utah could have kept Gobert, Mitchell and Bojan Bogdanovic and won enough games to reach the postseason again. The organization ultimately decided that was no longer worth it — financially and otherwise — to continue down that path.
On Wednesday against Denver, Utah will start on another path. It's one that will require the Jazz to be nearly flawless in their use of assets in order to reach their lofty future goals. They'll need some luck in the draft and have a good feel of when to cash in assets in trades.
As Ainge said, it's a path that will require patience — from coaches, from players, from the front office, and, yes, from the fans.
"I think that we have some of the most amazing fans in the world, and they're supportive," Smith said. "And I think we're super fortunate because of that in this market. That being said, we've got to try to put together a great experience for them to want to come out and forget about life for a while and come together through the Utah Jazz, and that's on all of us as an organization.
"But it's one goal first, which is trying to get up and open up this next window for as long as we can have it."
